Day 6 - Vienna — Wayfaring Abroad

Today we started with a brewery tour. The tour was at 10, which meant that we had to be up a little early and out of the door by 9 so that we could take the metro out to the Ottakringer Brewery. Along the way from the metro station to the brewery we ran across a market traversing many blocks. It was only occupied by locals (as far as we could tell). It was a great way to start the day before moving on to beer.

A small market found along the road to Ottakringer.

We got to Ottakringer a little early because we're apparently poor at gauging how fast we walk a kilometer, even with a detour for a market. At the brewery we got placed on the tour with half of a large group of individuals visiting from a Thailand university. We predominantly stayed toward the back to allow the large group to stay together.

The tour was around an hour long and during it we learned quite a bit of information about Ottakringer. They are the oldest Viennese brewery at 179 years old and are currently the last of the big brewery that operate solely in the borders of the city. There were originally 25 big breweries in Vienna but after the war and various bankruptcies the only one left was Ottakringer. Now they sell approximately 8% of all beer in Vienna, the third most in the city, and are only behind Stiegl, which is from Salzburg, at 12% and Heineken which owns 60% of the market. We were also showed the former underground tunnels where they had a kilometer tunnel filled with 8,000 liter wood barrels filled with beer in order to service Vienna in the early 1900s.

At the end of the tour they took us to the tasting room where they had 12 beers on tap, which we could sample as much as we wanted in the time we had, and then brought out pretzels to eat as well. It was one of the better tours I have been on.

After getting a little drunk and a little full on beer and pretzels we made the long walk back to the metro station where we made our way to Naschmarkt. This is a long row of open air stalls along Rechte Wienzeile. There are a lot of flea market like stalls, filled with clothing, trinkets, electronics, photographs and the like. Then there are more proper stalls filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, veggies and café's. It is quite the eclectic group of stalls and in such a long thin space. We walked through it over the course of many blocks until we decided that it was time to peel off to find an old café Tyler had read about.

We found the café on the next block over, Café Sperl. The café was established in 1880 and is in the same style as years before. We sat inside where they had a piano player and got some apple strudel, eggs and coffee.

Café Sperl is located on Gumpendorfer Straße which is an up and coming street next to Naschmarkt and has had an influx of restaurants and hipster like stores opening. We stopped at a place called phil, a café/bookstore. They have a small collection of photography, travel books and other assorted fiction. Most of the books are in German but there were occasional English books. We looked through the books for short time and wandered around.

Once we were done it was then time to head over to Belvedere Palace and the expansive gardens. Luckily for us Karlskirche is in a park directly in line from Naschmarkt, so along the way we were able to see the beautiful church. On the way from Karlskirche and onto Belvedere Palace we decided it best to take the extra time to walk to the train station and purchase our tickets to Bratislava so that we can get in and get on a train in the morning.

I have been wanting passport stamps from within the European union, but can never get them and did not have the chance when our train got in from Budapest so while we were at the train station I went to information and asked if they knew where it was possible to get a passport stamp. Unfortunately, they had no clue and were frankly a little puzzled. So I will just have to hope that when we cross over to the Czech Republic that they will stamp our passports.

After the train station we got to Belvedere Palace from the back side and walked past the large pool and came across the large sloped grounds. It is a really remarkable sight and quite beautiful. There are statues around the exterior of the gardens and fountains and small waterfalls inside the gardens. The slope, which appeared to be natural, is the perfect complement to the views. From the top of Belvedere Palace you can see down the gardens and out over the top of Vienna. It is not a birds eye view but it gives you a good line of sight to St. Stephen's Tower and across the various beautiful buildings.

Looking at the backside of Belvedere Palace.

We slowly made our way through the gardens, sitting and relaxing at the various different garden settings before making it out of the Belvedere Gardens on onward to Stadtpark. With such a beautiful day out, 80 degrees, sunny and with nice cloud cover, there were groups of people lounging on the grass and people playing soccer and basketball. This led to our long walk back to the apartment by way of the waterfront.

Later tonight after spending a couple hours off of my feet I am planning on going back out into the city center to see about taking a couple photos of St. Stephen's Cathedral and Hofburg Palace at night.

Distance walked: 11.13 miles